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Anxiety Disorders
Common
Characteristics
Anxiety
Disorders categorize a large number of disorders where the
primary feature is abnormal or inappropriate anxiety.
Everybody has experienced anxiety. Think about the
last time a loud noise frightened you and remember the
feelings inside your body. Chances are you experienced
an increased heart rate, tensed muscles, and perhaps an
acute sense of focus as you tried to determine the source of
the noise. These are all symptoms of anxiety.
They are also part of a normal process in our bodies called
the 'flight or flight' phenomenon. This means that
your body is preparing itself to either fight or protect
itself or to flee a dangerous situation.
These
symptoms become a problem when they occur without any
recognizable stimulus or when the stimulus does not warrant
such a reaction. In other words, inappropriate anxiety
is when a person's heart races, breathing increases, and
muscles tense without any reason for them to do so.
Once a medical cause is ruled out, an anxiety disorder may
be the culprit.
Disorders
in this Category
Acute
Stress Disorder
Agoraphobia
(with or without a history of Panic Disorder)
Generalized
Anxiety Disorder [GAD]
Obsessive-Compulsive
Disorder [OCD]
Panic
Disorder (with or without Agoraphobia)
Phobias
(including Social Phobia)
Posttraumatic
Stress Disorder [PTSD]
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